Nigerian president tells First Lady she 'belongs in the kitchen' after she dares to criticise him for being out touch with government

Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, said his wife "belonged in the kitchen" on Friday after she accused him of being out of touch with his government and threatened to drop her political support.

Aisha Buhari, the First Lady of Nigeria, launched the extraordinary attack on her husband in a BBC interview where she claimed he “does not know” the majority of the senior officials working under him.

She also threatened to drop her support for the former military dictator at the next general election unless he reshuffles his cabinet.

"The president does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don't know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years," she said.

Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria's president, speaks in New York in SeptemberCredit:
Michael Nagle/ Bloomberg

"A lot of people have been coming on their own and also collectively to tell him things are not going the way they should, when it comes to putting certain people in positions.”

A few hours later, Mr Buhari attempted to laugh off the criticism by responding that his wife “belonged in the kitchen.”

"I don't know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room,” he told reporters after a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

Mrs Merkel, who was standing next to Mr Buhari, responded by giving him a steely glare and then laughing.

He also said he would remind his wife that he ran for president three times before and succeeded on the fourth.

“So, I claim superior knowledge over her and the rest of the opposition, because in the end I have succeeded,” he said.

“It's not easy to satisfy the whole Nigerian opposition parties or to participate in the government."

The Nigerian president, who was briefly a dictator in the 1980s, was elected last year on an anti-corruption and anti-nepotism platform.

I have decided, as his wife, that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it againAisha Buhari

He also pledged to smash an insurgency led by the Isil-allied extremists Boko Haram in the northeast, who kidnapped 218 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014.

On Wednesday Mr Buhari announced the government had successfully negotiated the release of 21 of the girls, though it was unclear whether this was due to a ransom or prisoner exchange.

The same region is facing a famine that could kill tens of thousands of people after Boko Haram disrupted local transport and farming infrastructure.

The country has also fallen into recession due to slumped oil prices and has lost its reputation as Africa’s biggest producer of petroleum.

Critics of the president say he exacerbated Nigeria's economic crisis by taking too long to negotiate its 2016 budget.

In an interview with the BBC’s Hausa-language service that was broadcast on Friday, Mrs Buhari also claimed many officials were ignorant of her husband's manifesto.

"He is yet to tell me [if he will stand for re-election in 2019], but I have decided as his wife that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before... I will never do it again," she said.

She called on the president to dismiss his current batch of top officials and replace them with ministers who shared his vision of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a coalition that united to remove the People's Democratic Party of Buhari's predecessor Goodluck Jonathan.

“Most of these people...number one, nobody knows them, and number two they don't know our manifesto,” she added.